Monday, March 7, 2011

K Students support Renovations

Kalamazoo College has proposed the renovation of their Athletic fields, a new fitness center and replacement of the Natatorium. The Athletic field’s project has proposed set plans for this spring, costing between 14-16 million. The fitness center has been suggested, but no plans have been set, with an estimate cost being 20+ million. The Natatorium was also suggested but not planned, possibly to combine with the new fitness center, and no estimated cost has been mentioned. These proposals have been brought to the Zoning Board of Appeals, to determine if these renovations can take place. We believe these proposals will mostly affect the lives of Kalamazoo College Students. We wanted to find out how supportive the Kalamazoo College students were to these new renovations. Not only did we want to find how supportive students were to Kalamazoo College’s proposed renovations, we were also interested in finding whether or not being a student athlete affected student support. We took a sample of 50 students at Kalamazoo College, randomizing by collecting data from each dormitory and Upjohn Library. One question on our survey was a scale from 1 (least supportive) to 10 (most supportive) asking students how supportive they are towards the renovation proposals. We found the average of these answers from the 50 students we surveyed, and found the average answer to be 7.02, suggesting within our sample, we concluded that students were over-all supportive of these renovations. After calculating the support of students, we hypothesized that student athletes within our sample were more supportive towards the renovations because they will more likely be affected. Within this sample, we collected surveys from 16 student athletes and 34 non-student athletes. We used hypothesis testing to compare the average of student athletes to the average of non-student athletes, and to find student athletes are more supportive than non-student athletes. After calculating, we are 95% confident that student athletes are more supportive towards the renovations. This data can support our theory that because the renovations will more likely affect the student athletes, they have more incentive to be supportive. In conclusion, our data shows that Kalamazoo College students support the proposed renovations which should influence the decision to allow these plans to take place.